Factors influencing local tourists’ decision-making on choosing a destination

Source: The State Statistical…, 2015, p. 90-91

The study of the Business Insight International Research Group (2011) revealed that 

65,9 % of Baku residents travelled in summer months, especially to seaside destinations, 

in order to rest and restore their psychological and physical strength. 55,6 % of respond-

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ents have chosen to travel within Azerbaijan, 25,8 % – to foreign countries and 18,6 % 

of locals have taken their holidays both in the country and abroad for various of reasons: 

income, living condition, formation of cultural and aesthetic taste, price of services and 

products, discounts, temperature, number of sunny days, geographical condition, natural 

and cultural resources, medical tourism and others. 

Turkey was the most favourable foreign country for 42,3 % of Azerbaijani tourists 

(Business Insight…, 2011). apart from having a very high level of improvement in tour-

ism and being one of the best tourism destinations in the world, the respondents picked 

this country because of similarities in language, religion, culture, and having local rela-

tives and friends living in Turkey. Russia was the second tourism country for Baku resi-

dents (19,6 %) and Georgia has got the third rank (10 %) (Business Insight…, 2011). 

Despite the low international tourism improvement as compared to Turkey, Russia was 

chosen because of business and shopping issues, and because it has a close relation-

ship with Azerbaijan. Close location, work, training, education, suitable prices, a lack of 

language barrier and other reasons were pointed out by the respondents who has chosen 

Georgia as a tourism destination (Business Insight…, 2011). Other countries were Italy, 

United Arab Emirates, Germany, France, etc. 20,6 % of respondents travelled to foreign 

countries because of the high level of service. Visiting friends and relatives is an essen-

tial point, since more than 50mn azerbaijanis live abroad.

Generally, an Azerbaijani tourist gives priority to destinations with an unpolluted en-

vironment, beautiful nature, resorts and sandy seaside. The foreign countries with similar 

languages (Azerbaijani, Russian and Turkish) that are spoken in the country, culture and 

religion and local destinations with good infrastructure, nature and cultural/historical 

heritage are important factors in choosing tourism destination. Furthermore, the level of 

service and price are among other features that depend on management, marketing and 

human resources of the tourism destination which affect tourists’ decision. The results of 

secondary data analysis show that one of the main problems of tourism in Azerbaijan is 

a low number of tourism days. Consequently, new ideas and projects need to be imple-

mented in order to increase domestic tourism all year around. The country has a lot of 

potential for improvement: advances in level of service, making of durable and competi-

tive tourism products and services alongside with comfortable transportation, suitable/

appropriate price and human resources are among other factors for improvement (Busi-

ness Insight…, 2011; Mammadov, 2013; The State Statistical…, 2015).